What's New

VMware Workstation 8.0.5 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues. It is a free update for all VMware Workstation 8 users.

Prior Releases of Workstation

Known problems from prior releases of VMware Workstation are described in the release notes for each release. To view release notes for the prior releases of VMware Workstation, see the following links.

General Improvements

Workstation 8.0.5 accepts a Workstation 9 license key. Customers who have reasons for not upgrading immediately can purchase Workstation 9 and continue to use Workstation 8 as necessary.

The OVFtool included with Workstation and used to upload virtual machines to VMware vSphere has been updated to version 3.0.1.

USB devices plugged into the host are now available to shared virtual machines when accessed remotely.

The shrink function of VMware Tools has been enhanced to support the ext4 filesystem.

Workstation has been enhanced to open virtual machines that use the Appliance View and were created in earlier versions of Workstation. The ability to create an Appliance View will not be reintroduced. However, if the Access Port has been configured and the virtual machine is powered on, then a new menu item, VM > Manage > Connect to Access Port, and a new command link at the bottom of the virtual machine Summary Page, Connect to Access Port, will be visible. If either menu item or button is selected, Workstation opens a browser to the relevant URL.

The most current snapshot is now displayed on the virtual machine Summary Page.

Installing Workstation on some international versions of Windows with localized configuration strings occasionally resulted in the following: Error - 1920. Service VMware Authorization Service (VMAuthdService) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services. The Workstation installer has been modified to correctly handle international characters.

The Workstation 8 UI no longer crashes when attempting to edit Virtual Machine Settings on systems where the vminst.log file permissions were read-only.

Workstation can now start a virtual machine on a Linux hosts with huge pages enabled and in use without displaying an unable to reserve memory error.

Cloning from a snapshot of a Windows XP Mode virtual machine failed. Workstation has been enhanced to enable cloning of virtual machines that were originally created for use with Virtual PC.

Occasionally, a Bluetooth device that failed to connect to a virtual machine would cause an unrecoverable error to be displayed. This issue has been resolved.

When the Grab keyboard and mouse on keypress preference is set, and the host and guest status indicators for capslock, numlock, or scrlock get out of sync, pressing Ctrl+Alt to ungrab from the virtual machine now successfully releases the cursor from the virtual machine console.

When Workstation detects a CPU clock speed that spikes in excess of 6000MHz, Workstation displayed an error and prevented users from running virtual machines until the clock speed baseline was reset. Workstation has been modified to allow you to continue to run virtual machines after encountering this event.

When attempting to take a snapshot of a powered on virtual machine that contains hundreds of virtual disk files (VMDK files), you may encounter a lock contention and receive the following: Error taking snapshot: An error occurred while saving the snapshot: Failed to lock the file. The software has been updated to prevent this problem from occurring.

Adding or removing USB printers from the host was not always reflected correctly in the virtual machine. This issue has been fixed.

On Ubuntu 11.10 hosts with IPv6 disabled, attempting to connect to a remote host failed. The mechanism used by Workstation to resolve IP addresses has been updated to enable connections.

After a file has been modified on the host that is shared with the guest operating system, listing the permissions of that file from within a Linux guest displays ??????????. The HGFS code has been fixed and the file permissions are now displayed correctly.

On certain systems, Workstation was unable to detect when the hardware-assisted virtualization technology was enabled. The virtualization technology detection algorithm has been modified to correct this problem.

Uploading virtual machines running specific operating systems to an ESX 4.0 server could result in an Upload failed: Line 116: Unsupported element 'ExtraConfig' error. The upload procedure has been modified to prevent this error from occurring.

International keyboards are now mapped correctly on Fedora-16 and RHEL-6 hosts.

A virtual machine created using Use a physical disk (For advanced users) from the new virtual machine wizard may display the following error when powering on: A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state... The cause of this issue has been addressed.

Workstation installed in a non-default path on Linux now successfully mounts a physical disk directly to a virtual machine.

When a Unity Mode window of an application running in a Linux virtual machine was minimized and restored, the resulting window occasionally displayed in an incorrect size. You were unable to resize the new window without exiting Unity Mode. This problem no longer occurs.

When running Ubuntu 11.10 in a virtual machine and toggling in and out of Unity Mode, the application launcher on the Ubuntu desktop occasionally failed to display correctly. This issue has been fixed.

The host and guest clipboards were not synchronized if you activated a Unity window via the keyboard (Alt+Tab). This issue has been fixed.

Text copied from the mrxvt terminal emulator running in a virtual machine can now be pasted to the host.

An issue that caused certain calculations run on Isagraph Workbench 3.55 (and other programs that use win87em.dll) to occasionally encounter the error WSCM1EDT caused a General Protection Fault... has been fixed.

During the upgrade or restore of an iPad 3 device via iTunes running in a virtual machine, Workstation will now automatically reconnect the device to the virtual machine and complete the operation without manual intervention.

I/O latency issues have been addressed by increasing the total number of workerLib threads available in the VMX.

Under very specific circumstances, and when all other windows are minimized, clicking on the minimize button in the upper right hand corner of the Workstation user interface would minimize the application interface and then immediately maximized the interface. The window management code has been modified to prevent this from occurring.

After upgrading VMware Tools in a Windows virtual machine, some users encountered an access violation error message on startup. The thinprint.dll file is now correctly installed to avoid this issue.

Nested Virtual Machine Improvements

On certain systems, the virtual hardware reported the wrong Intel architecture version which resulted in failed attempts to use the PERF_GLOBAL_CTRL MSR. This resulted in nested virtual machines failing to resume after being suspended. This issue has been fixed.

Known Issues

RHEL 6.x sound card produces constant background noise in Windows 7 virtual machine
Certain sound cards on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.x may produce stuttering or garbled sound when set up in surround sound mode (4.0, 5.1 or 7.1 output). This is due to an issue with how older versions of the ALSA PulseAudio plug-in handles the underrun condition.

Workaround: Do one of the following.

Update alsa-plugins-pulseaudio to version 1.0.24 that has the appropriate fix applied.

Add sound.bufferTime = "400" to the VMX file.

Virtual machines imported with OVF Tool 3.0 do not function with Workstation 8
Virtual machines exported from Virtual Box 4.2.2 and imported into Workstation 8.0.5 with OVF Tool 3.0 may be created with a virtual hardware version that is too new for Workstation 8. The virtual machine cannot be powered on in Workstation 8.

Workaround: Change the hardware version manually.

Open the .vmx file of the virtual machine.

Edit virtualhw.version = 9 to virtualhw.version = 8

Save the file and restart the virtual machine.

Unity appears disabled for Ubuntu 12.04 guest
When you power on any guest using the Ubuntu Unity desktop environment (Ubuntu 11.10+), the Unity menu and Unity tool bar appears disabled. Unity is also disabled for guests using Compiz and Enlightenment window managers.

Unity has been disabled for Linux operating systems that include the new OpenGL driver. The new driver does not yet support running in Unity mode therefore the toolbar button and menu items will be disabled for virtual machines that include this driver.